The Facts of Life homepage  >  Season 3
Episode 1: "Growing Pains" (recap)
Original airdate: 10/28/1981

Tootie gets her feelings hurt when Blair, Jo, and Natalie exclude her from their impromptu drinking party...and retaliates by guzzling an entire bottle of expensive wine.
Episode 2: "Fear Strikes Back" (recap)
Original airdate: 11/4/1981

Natalie is attacked on campus, then is pressured by Mrs. Garrett to go to a terrible self defense class.
Episode 3: "A Baby in the House" (recap)
Original airdate: 11/11/1981

Former Eastland student Alison drops by for a visit...then takes off and leaves her baby behind.
Episode 4: "A Friend in Deed" (recap)
Original airdate: 11/18/1981

Blair wigs out when she discovers that her mother might have breast cancer.
Episode 5: "Front Page" (recap)
​Original airdate: 11/25/1981

Jo gets revenge on a dickish teacher by writing a story in the school newspaper that exposes his recent arrest during a cocaine party raid.
Episode 6: "Give and Take" (recap)
Original airdate: 12/2/1981

When Mrs. Garrett loses her entire pension, she takes a second job at a Howard Johnson's restaurant...which pays really well, and makes her rethink her position at Eastland.
Episode 7: "Sweet Sorrow" (recap)
Original airdate: 12/9/1981

Jo's new friendship with a boy from Bates Academy causes her to rethink her relationship with Eddie.
Episode 8: "From Russia With Love" (recap)
Original airdate: 12/16/1981

Natalie is irritated when her Eastern European grandmother drops by Eastland and ruins her weekend plans with a boy.
Episode 9: "Dear Me" (recap)
Original airdate: 12/23/1981

Tootie gets so wigged out when her friends egg her on to date and kiss boys that she invents a boyfriend named Teddy and starts writing love letters to herself.
Episode 10: "Cousin Geri Returns, aka Geri's Romance" (recap)
​Original airdate: 12/30/1981

Blair gets uneasy when Cousin Geri starts dating an attractive teacher at Bates Academy.

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Episode 11: "Legacy" (recap)
Original airdate: 1/6/1982

​Blair is horrified when she learns that her recently deceased grandfather was a segregationist and member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Episode 12:  "Green-Eyed Monster" (recap)
Original airdate: 1/13/1982

Natalie gets jealous when Tootie gets the lead role in South Pacific and vows to publish a negative review of her performance in the school paper.
Episode 13: "The Americanization of Miko" (recap)
Original airdate: 1/20/1982

Things get momentarily tense when Miko's stern father threatens to pull her out of Eastland and enroll her in a more discipline oriented school in Tokyo.
Episode 14: "The Marriage Brokers" (recap)
Original airdate: 1/27/1982

The girls get concerned when they learn that the man Mrs. Garrett has been dating for fifteen years has zero desire to ever marry.
Episode 15: "Starstruck" (recap)
Original airdate: 2/3/1982

Tootie gets free tickets to a Jermaine Jackson concert, and then manages to slip into the singer's dressing room for what ends up being a less than satisfying one-on-one chat.
Episode 16: "The Four Musketeers" (recap)
Original airdate: 2/10/1982

The girls are overjoyed to learn that they are finally free of kitchen duty and can live in the regular campus dorms...but by the end of the episode, they're back where they started after racking up another debt. 
Episode 17: "The Affair" (recap)
Original airdate: 2/17/1982

Natalie confronts her father after she catches him smooching his mistress in a Manhattan restaurant.
Episode 18: "Runaway" (recap)
Original airdate: 2/24/1982

Tootie flouts the rules when she sneaks off to New York City unchaperoned and narrowly escapes being recruited as a hooker.
Episode 19: "New York, New York" (recap)
Original airdate: 3/3/1982

Blair and Jo spend the weekend in New York with old friends...and soon realize they've outgrown their former besties.
Episode 20: "Kids Can Be Cruel" (recap)
Original airdate: 3/17/1982

Blair is dismayed when a dinner box charity auction goes awry and she has to go on a date with a pimply outcast.
Episode 21: "Mind Your Own Business" (recap)
Original airdate: 3/24/1982

Natalie gets angry at Blair for reading her diary without permission. Mrs. Garrett is anxiety-ridden about delivering a speech at a dieticians' convention.
Episode 22: "The Academy" (recap)
Original airdate: 3/31/1982

When Jo's friend Buzz needs a date for a military dance at a nearby academy, she sets him up with Blair.
Episode 23: "Jo's Cousin" (recap)
Original airdate: 4/14/1982

Jo's cousin, Terri, comes of age on her fourteenth birthday and wears an ugly prairie dress at dinner to impress a boy she's crushing on.
Episode 24: "Read No Evil" (recap)
Original airdate: 5/5/1982

Natalie loses her job as editor of the school paper after she takes Mrs. Garrett's advice and writes an editorial opposing the board's plan to ban books.